empty papers - what is strategy work

Empty papers in organization - what is strategy work?

Have you ever been in a meeting where you would talk about empty papers with your highly esteemed colleagues? Please do not deny this as such implausible scenario too easily. Let us image the setting where people sit around the table and they all have pile of empty papers on front of them. Let us envision further that they all are willing to present excellent comments concerning those papers. The comments are presented, debated even, but the papers remain empty. And perhaps the papers are taken to a next meeting where this happens again.







Well, I admit the above mentioned may have happened rather rarely in any organization. But let us change our approach a little bit. Have you ever been in a meeting where you talk about papers which probably will not change anything in your working life? And if you pause to think could it be that in that same meeting the papers under discussion will not change anything on the working life of anyone discussing about those papers. Have you experienced something like this? (Please tick the right option: never, sometimes, quite often, often, almost every time, always)

One question. Why do you talk about empty papers with your colleaques in different meetings? Is there a some force in play which make you to do it, or is there some special personal temptation that you crave to do it? Let us dig a bit deeper.

Do you think that it is really work to talk about papers which are not connected to anything in this world? Probably it can be called as work and even rather demanding work, but probably it is not that effective or productive to debate about empty papers. And yet, I would claim that to some extend empty papers are under discussion in many organizations and in numerous meetings all the time.






What I am proposing here is that meetings should not be about empty papers but about real issues. This appears obvious but it may not be so in real life and in real life meetings. Why this is the case is a very comlex issue and in order to be ready to answer to that question we really should go very deep in examining those forces which are in place in any organization and also to the ways how people see their work. That analysis escapes the limits of a single blog. However, I propose here something which might on its part make your organization and your meetings better. Could this blog on its part be a road sign, which helps you to find a way to meetings where the role of empty papers is as minimal as possible?

I suggest that in every meeting you should start the meeting with an open discussion and you would make it as certain as possible that all the participants woul feel as free as possible to voice their own opinions. Here I propose some questions which might help to develop your organization and your meetings. Perpaps you might actually to use the questions to some extend but of course the goal should be that gradually the culture in your organization whould become such where empty paper meetings would take as little time as possible.

The questions which could guide the discussion could be for instance following:

What are we doing

Why are we talking about these papers, what we wish to do with them? Do really see some relevant real life connections and consequences? What do we see, what is most important? What our discussion on the basis of those papers really mean in practice?

Connection to my working life

How the papers under discussion are relevant to me and to the other in that meeting? Should the relevance be so high that whatever we are talking about really mean or at least could mean something concrete to all of us or at least to some of us? In case the topics under discussion will not change anything relevent in some foreseeable future should we really talk about those papers? What we are really talking about then if the connection to reality is very vague? Why we are doing that kind of talking? At least the answer to these questions should be raised on the table.

Road ahead

In sum. The more I work with and withing organizations, the more I see that organizations could be much more effective, more agile and clearly better in providing valuable results and outsomes to people in this world. Often improvements would not add the workload for the people in that organization, probably quite the opposite.

I am very convinced that we are all doing important work when we try to make our dear organizations better. Let keep us doing that.

P.s.
While writing this blog it occured to me that Charles Handy has written an excellent book: The Empty raincoat, which I read years ago. If my memory serves, in that book he examines the role of us as real persons in organizations and whether there is room for us as individuals in the work life. In my blog I am in a way pondering whether real issues are really present and under discussion in our organizations. Is there room for facts and real issues in our meetings?